Graduate Studies: Some Ideas
Francesca was telling me about how they do classes at her undergrad school in Italy and a few things seem to be very good. After some more thought, this post came about.
Three things:
There are exceptions but in my experience I've usually felt like professors would rather be spending their time in ways other than teaching.
Secondly, I do most of my learning by reading the prescribed and other books. I think I'm not quite the norm here, but it seems that there is enough literature out there that one can do most learning from books. Of course, there is still trickery and guidance that must be passed on from generation to generation in more interactive ways and books certainly don't answer questions -- not even if you raise your voice, curse, pull your hair or ask nicely!
Finally, it seems safe to assume that graduate students have enough interest and motivation to pursue their own studies without much of someone forcing them to do things like turning in homework assignments for grade in order to make sure they practice problems. Besides, the qualifier will speak for itself.
With all this in mind, it seems that the concept of 'graduate course' could use a bit of revamping. The main idea is to give more freedom to the students while trying to minimize the time that faculty have to devote to them in terms of the basic subjects -- research is a whole different beast. A department could, for instance, run the program so that the students are not required to take a core curriculum of classes. Instead, simply make clear what subjects should the students be responsible for. Learn this. See ya at the qual.
Of course only that would render the department useless. They need to do more for the student, and they may also want to monitor progress. One minimum requirement is for the department to provide tools such as problems and solutions (most schools give old qualifiers to current students as it is) -- according to Francesca in Italy this is fairly standard practice in most classes. Another tool to be provided should be an 'official bibliography' which should include information about what chapters to study. Heaven forbid someone read all of Jackson in hopes of preparing for the qual! Each student should be assigned an academic adviser with whom she is required to meet a few times a term. Finally, instead of the department assigning someone to teach each subject, the department could simply designate a faculty member to be the 'resident expert' in each subject for the year. The 'resident expert' should be available to students a few hours a week and could perhaps host a 2-3 hour group Q&A session each week. One could request that questions be emailed a couple of days in advance so that the Q&A sessions run a bit more smoothly.
Such an approach could have many benefits. For one, research is largely a self-study type activity and is also rather unstructured. I've heard people say that making the transition from classes to research is difficult because one has been trained in a very structured fashion for many years. For another, I think placing most of the responsibility about what and how to learn on the student is valuable preparation. Again, we are trying to train people to be capable of learning things that nobody knows yet. Finally, I think it would allow departments to use their faculty resources better. For example, I've asked a few people why is it that physics departments usually don't teach an undergraduate freshman class on basic mathematical methods for physicists. The answer is invariably: "we would like to, but it is hard to find resources for such a thing." It drains a lot less time to be available by appointment than to prepare lecture, hold office hours and grade homeworks and tests i.e. being the 'resident expert' should be a lot less time consuming than teaching the class.
As far as monitoring the progress of students, the department could require that the student turn in problems a few times a term. Checking for satisfactory progress should be a bit quicker and easier than assigning grades fairly based on homework and tests. In the end, the ultimate progress indicator is the qualifier anyways. But of course, departments may want to ensure that nobody is getting a one-year paid vacation!
As I write this I am thinking of Physics programs, but I have just edited the title to take Physics out. This, with some variation, could apply in most subjects.
EDIT:
A re-formatting of this kind would obviously be very difficult for any department as there are probably a million bureaucratic issues to deal with. More importantly, the current system clearly works (maybe it could be better, but it is certainly good enough). So perhaps a dose of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" is in order. There are also several advantages of the current system. My friend David pointed out to me that a class is a good way to set pace and to get people with similar interest focused on the same subject. Also there is that a lecture by a good teacher who likes to teach is likely worth more than the same time spent reading on the same subject.
So maybe all this should just be some possible suggestions on how to run classes rather than how to run the first year of a graduate program.
Three things:
There are exceptions but in my experience I've usually felt like professors would rather be spending their time in ways other than teaching.
Secondly, I do most of my learning by reading the prescribed and other books. I think I'm not quite the norm here, but it seems that there is enough literature out there that one can do most learning from books. Of course, there is still trickery and guidance that must be passed on from generation to generation in more interactive ways and books certainly don't answer questions -- not even if you raise your voice, curse, pull your hair or ask nicely!
Finally, it seems safe to assume that graduate students have enough interest and motivation to pursue their own studies without much of someone forcing them to do things like turning in homework assignments for grade in order to make sure they practice problems. Besides, the qualifier will speak for itself.
With all this in mind, it seems that the concept of 'graduate course' could use a bit of revamping. The main idea is to give more freedom to the students while trying to minimize the time that faculty have to devote to them in terms of the basic subjects -- research is a whole different beast. A department could, for instance, run the program so that the students are not required to take a core curriculum of classes. Instead, simply make clear what subjects should the students be responsible for. Learn this. See ya at the qual.
Of course only that would render the department useless. They need to do more for the student, and they may also want to monitor progress. One minimum requirement is for the department to provide tools such as problems and solutions (most schools give old qualifiers to current students as it is) -- according to Francesca in Italy this is fairly standard practice in most classes. Another tool to be provided should be an 'official bibliography' which should include information about what chapters to study. Heaven forbid someone read all of Jackson in hopes of preparing for the qual! Each student should be assigned an academic adviser with whom she is required to meet a few times a term. Finally, instead of the department assigning someone to teach each subject, the department could simply designate a faculty member to be the 'resident expert' in each subject for the year. The 'resident expert' should be available to students a few hours a week and could perhaps host a 2-3 hour group Q&A session each week. One could request that questions be emailed a couple of days in advance so that the Q&A sessions run a bit more smoothly.
Such an approach could have many benefits. For one, research is largely a self-study type activity and is also rather unstructured. I've heard people say that making the transition from classes to research is difficult because one has been trained in a very structured fashion for many years. For another, I think placing most of the responsibility about what and how to learn on the student is valuable preparation. Again, we are trying to train people to be capable of learning things that nobody knows yet. Finally, I think it would allow departments to use their faculty resources better. For example, I've asked a few people why is it that physics departments usually don't teach an undergraduate freshman class on basic mathematical methods for physicists. The answer is invariably: "we would like to, but it is hard to find resources for such a thing." It drains a lot less time to be available by appointment than to prepare lecture, hold office hours and grade homeworks and tests i.e. being the 'resident expert' should be a lot less time consuming than teaching the class.
As far as monitoring the progress of students, the department could require that the student turn in problems a few times a term. Checking for satisfactory progress should be a bit quicker and easier than assigning grades fairly based on homework and tests. In the end, the ultimate progress indicator is the qualifier anyways. But of course, departments may want to ensure that nobody is getting a one-year paid vacation!
As I write this I am thinking of Physics programs, but I have just edited the title to take Physics out. This, with some variation, could apply in most subjects.
EDIT:
A re-formatting of this kind would obviously be very difficult for any department as there are probably a million bureaucratic issues to deal with. More importantly, the current system clearly works (maybe it could be better, but it is certainly good enough). So perhaps a dose of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" is in order. There are also several advantages of the current system. My friend David pointed out to me that a class is a good way to set pace and to get people with similar interest focused on the same subject. Also there is that a lecture by a good teacher who likes to teach is likely worth more than the same time spent reading on the same subject.
So maybe all this should just be some possible suggestions on how to run classes rather than how to run the first year of a graduate program.
posted by rz at 2:44 PM
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